


early bright

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Intimacy, Kissing, post-Hunting The Archon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2017-07-11
Packaged: 2018-11-15 23:40:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11241687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: The truth of the matter was both more and less profound. He trusted her, sure. He considered her a formidable ally and a priceless resource, yes. But underneath it all, the foundation upon which his regard for her shaped itself into a wide, impregnable fortress, was such a tangle of feelings that to unknot them would loose words like ‘admiration’ and ‘respect’ and ‘love’ from the carefully mortared brick walls that kept his high opinion of her safe.He cared for her; that was the beginning and end of it. It was as simple and complicated as that.For her, he denied himself the instincts that continued to save his life to this day.





	early bright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sumi/gifts).



Reyes Vidal made it his business to know a lot of things about a lot of people. That was his job, his calling, his greatest skill. There was only one person for whom that policy ever relaxed completely and her name was Sara Ryder. Even then, however, he’d only refrained from nosing in her business once Sloane was safely out of the picture. The Charlatan allowed his associates a certain leeway when they proved themselves to him, after all, and she’d done so on so many occasions, he could no longer keep track. That deserved consideration and reward.

If not for the way his heart pounded when she was near and his palms sweated if she touched him and how badly he wanted her good opinion no matter where in the galaxy she was, he’d have called it professional courtesy.

If not for the fact that he kept no tabs on her at all and still worried, he’d have called it perfect trust.

The truth of the matter was both more and less profound. He trusted her, sure. He considered her a formidable ally and a priceless resource, yes. But underneath it all, the foundation upon which his regard for her shaped itself into a wide, impregnable fortress, was such a tangle of feelings that to unknot them would loose words like ‘admiration’ and ‘respect’ and ‘love’ from the carefully mortared brick walls that kept his high opinion of her safe.

He cared for her; that was the beginning and end of it. It was as simple and complicated as that.

For her, he denied himself the instincts that continued to save his life to this day.

And it was all well and good that he did so. No harm had ever come of it. Sara never blindsided him with treachery. She never said anything that wasn’t truthful and she never went more than four days without sending him a message of some sort, assuming Reyes didn’t send her one first. Short, long. Didn’t matter. One always showed up. It wasn’t that Reyes was keeping track exactly, but ferreting out patterns of behavior was one of those things he came by honestly. And this was a pattern that had held since they first admitted their feelings to one another.

So he might’ve already been a little antsy as he sat in his room in Tartarus, given that today was day six and he’d sent multiple missives already in the last couple of days. Nothing unusual necessarily. Nothing pestering. An update about Kadara, her outpost, and Reyes himself. Nothing extravagant certainly. He would’ve done the same even if she had carried on like normal, offering generous updates about the Tempest and its crew, her latest attempt to locate some plant for Suvi, whatever was happening that he couldn’t be around to see.

And yet, Reyes had heard nothing.

There might, too, have been a bottle of terrible whisky sitting abandoned on the bench next to him, a constant presence since he’d purloined it late on day four. It may have been sitting there for over a day now, half-drunk, and Kian may have wanted it back in the interest of fulfilling actual paying customers’ desire for terrible whisky.

Hang what Kian wanted. As long as he left Reyes alone, Reyes would keep the terrible, undrunk whisky. He might need it.

Besides, there was nothing wrong. This just required Reyes to refine his understanding of Sara’s habits. No big deal. No—

His omni-tool flickered and beeped, flashed a new message warning at him, an alert he only allowed for Sara’s notes these days. Otherwise, the thing would never stop lighting up and he wouldn’t have a moment’s peace.

Heart in his throat, he tapped at the display and waited for her message to load. He had no idea what he wanted it to say, why he was so concerned—he had no reason to be, she was safe, the Tempest was safe, her crew was good and Sara always came back with a story and a smile, he would know if something was wrong—or how he would reply.

_Kadara is Kadara is Kadara, huh? That’s comforting. - Sara_

“That’s it?” he murmured, squinting down at the handful of words Sara had seen fit to send to him. But Reyes knew bullshit when he saw it and this, this was definitely that. Mouth dry, he tried to swallow around the trepidation closing around his neck. His mind, meanwhile, raced ahead of him, spooling out scenarios and outcomes as easy as breathing and not a single one backed up by fact or evidence or even the vaguest whiff of truth.

Only the biggest truths could be conveyed in so few words, but not like this.

There were so many ways to play this and any number of them would do the job. Of course, many others would do the opposite.

His teeth tugged at his lower lip. Knowing what to do for Kadara came easily for him. That came to him as easily as reading an architectural plan might. Everything fit and it always made sense even when the work was dirty. Knowing what to do for himself and for Sara? That was another beast entirely.

Something was wrong and he didn’t know how he knew it, why a relatively normal response would twist his gut and make the back of his neck tingle like danger was waiting for him just around the corner.

There was only one person on the Tempest other than Sara whom he might contact about this. Calling up her personal e-mail address, he didn’t allow himself to think too hard about how he’d ask and he didn’t let himself linger over the send button.

_What’s going on with Ryder? - RV_

The response was almost instantaneous and that, more than anything, confirmed that _something_ was wrong. It was like she’d been expecting to hear from him and wanted to do him the courtesy of not delaying more than necessary. Even if the contents of her missive lacked detail or direct confirmation, it still told Reyes more than enough.

_That’s not really my place to say, is it? - Nyx_

Something had happened. And now that he was sure of it, he needed to see Sara for himself. In the span of a few moments, already a blur, he’d sent Sara another message. _Come to Kadara Port_ , it said. _Please_. No greeting, no name. There was no time. There was no need. Who else would ask her to come here?

She had to come. Now. If she could. As soon as possible.

He had to see her for himself, gauge for himself how much of the truth she was omitting.

*

Workers milled about the docks, their voices raised in conversation and laughter and swearing. Reyes didn’t often make his way down here these days. Even though Sloane was gone, the itch of a threat remained. Nobody knew who Reyes really was, but every day he remained in control of Kadara, the better the chances he would be discovered by some disgruntled former Outcast. Sure, he could probably win.

But he couldn’t guarantee it and there was way less of a possibility that he could talk himself out of any trouble he might find himself in now than before. Better to avoid confrontation all together.

Searching the ships that came in, and the people, without appearing to was a skill he’d learned many years ago and he put it to good use now. No one paid him the slightest bit of mind as they passed him, too busy moving product or meeting partners or scuffing their feet as they made their way into the port city proper.

He chewed absently on his thumbnail, an old, long-abandoned habit, and pulled his hand violently away from his mouth when he realized what he was doing. Squaring his shoulders, he held both hands behind his back instead, wrapping the fingers of one around the opposite wrist. His pulse pounded against his palm in a bounding, regular, too-quick rhythm. If only Sara would arrive. Whether his instincts were wrong or not, he’d be relieved.

Answers always had been the greatest balm he knew.

The sky shone and sparkled with the reflected light of incoming ships. Each flash drove a spike into Reyes’s patience and each one brought Sara closer to her. At least, that was how he sold it to himself. Or tried to. Thin, quicksilver strands of disappointment and annoyance wound tight around him as every flicker resolved itself into a ship that was not the Tempest.

One after another after another until finally—

He’d know the sleek, gentle arc of the Tempest’s body in his sleep.

His patience shattered and the thousand glittering pieces left behind cut at him from the inside as it tried to force its way forward. He wanted to run, to drag the ship into dock himself, to encourage Kallo to _hurry up_. Reyes would dock the ship himself if he had to. He could do none of those things, of course. Not only would it draw attention to him, it would be pointless.

The moments during which the Tempest made planetfall crept by at glacial speeds, too many of them to count.

And then it seemed between one beat and the next, the Tempest was docked. The ramp was descending. Sara, impossibly small from this far away, was striding forward. Her armor looked different from the last time they’d seen one another, bulkier, more intimidating. He wondered where she got it and why she hadn’t come to him about it. He knew people and armor and how to get the best of both.

 _That doesn’t matter,_ Reyes thought. _Bigger fish_.

As she approached, his every desire was to take her in his arms, twine their fingers together, press a line of kisses from her neck to her mouth and back down again, the best sort of circuitous path he could imagine. But this was Kadara. The Pathfinder was the Pathfinder. And information was currency, was weakness, was scandal waiting to happen. No one knew about their intimacies save a chosen few. So it was with great reluctance that Reyes let Sara come to him, more grim than he was used to, a full circle’s worth of smudged shadows beneath her eyes to match the pair that pulled at the skin stretched between her cheeks and jaw.

“You look terrible,” he said, off-hand, casually, distantly pleasant. If they did not know one another so well, she might have accused him of callousness. Instead, her eyes flickered and a reluctant frown tugged at the corner of her mouth. She knew exactly what he meant and she wanted him to know it. Sara was quick; she’d always been so.

“And you’ve never looked better,” she answered with a wink and a deadly-edged smile that told him he’d be better off dropping it—whatever it was. He still didn’t know. Clapping Reyes on the shoulder, the least romantic hello he could imagine, she nudged him toward the gates past which lay the city. If she was curious about why he’d decided to meet her here, she didn’t let on. He fought the urge to grow cautious. Their association was already known. This expression of it couldn’t harm them. “Kadara continues to suit you.”

Reyes’s hand formed a fist as he stopped himself from placing his hand at the small of Sara’s back. There would be time for those small intimacies once they were safely ensconced in Tartarus.

But the trek across the city and back to the slums was long, almost arduous in how much it wrung from Reyes. Something was still wrong here and he still couldn’t figure it out.

A minuscule part of him thought he’d be able to parse the truth of it from just looking at her.

A foolish notion. Arrogant.

A very Reyes mistake to make. And one he pondered even once they were within the safe confines of Tartarus’s walls. The familiar pulse of its music thrummed in his bones. Vigorous and in many ways regular, it eased the tight coil of nerves in his chest. This place was as much Sara’s as it was his as far as he was concerned, and yet it still felt like he had the advantage here.

He had no idea if Sara agreed or not, nor whether she viewed Tartarus—or anywhere, possibly the Tempest—with an eye toward the sort of edge it might give her just by being there.

Sara preceded him into his private room, a place that grew less and less romantic with every one of her visits. Before the door could fully shut behind him, she’d turned and pressed him against it, her hands lifting to cup his jaw. This was—absolutely something he could get behind, though it hadn’t been his goal. Still wasn’t really. And yet he went pliant for her, his fingers hooking between the plates of armor that sat on her waist and hips.

This wasn’t the most comfortable position they’d ever been in, but it wasn’t the least either.

Her teeth caught, sharp, on his lower lip just the way he liked it.

He could have stayed here all day.

“Sara.” He spoke her name quietly against her mouth. And though he didn’t want to push her away, he did that, too. Searching her features, he raised one hand, thumbing the curve of her chin. Her head tilted as she leaned into his touch and for a moment she seemed all right. The evidence Reyes had seen in her features before disappeared entirely, made him question himself.

He never questioned himself.

And then she looked up at him again and he knew again that he hadn’t been wrong before. Reyes couldn’t ever call her fragile, but at that moment, he was afraid that whatever façade was holding her together would break. “Something’s the matter,” he said, gentler than he usually got to be. His fingers drifted up to feather through the hair on her temple. “What is it?”

“I don’t—” Huffing, she shook her head. Her gaze settled somewhere in the vicinity of his knees. “I didn’t want to worry you.”

Heart stuck in his throat and his gut twisting around inside of him, Reyes tried to laugh. “You’re doing a wonderful job of that, I can assure you.” So many scenarios flickered through his mind as she failed to answer him, each one stranger and more terrible than the last.

“Oh, hell.” Her hand shot out and grasped him tight around his wrist before sliding their palms together. Her skin carried enough heat to make his skin prickle almost uncomfortably. Sara always ran hot, but this felt like something else.

Was she ill?

 _No_ , he thought. That didn’t make sense. Rather, it made sense, but he saw no reason why she’d keep that to herself.

But she was nervous.

“We ran into the Archon while we were trying to—well, he had something we needed,” she said finally, stilted. “He… I…” She bit her lip and couldn’t bring herself to look at him. “SAM had to stop my heart. The Archon got a hold of us. Biolocking harnesses…”

“Pesky things, those,” Reyes answered. He didn’t have a better one for her. Shock, maybe, at the abrupt confession and the clinical way she spoke about it. And because he was an asshole, he couldn’t come up with one. Her heart had stopped. What was there to say to that? “Ingenious of SAM to think of it.”

Sara’s eyelids fluttered and closed. The sigh that escaped from between her lips hitched and cracked in two.

“If you were dead, it would disrupt the lock, yes?” He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, held her close. Even though the thick, intractable lines of her armor separated them, he felt better for getting even that much closer to her. Sweat prickled around his hairline and he almost couldn’t say it. A sharp ache settled in his stomach and lanced through every part of him at the thought that she’d died for a mission. Worse, maybe, was the fact she hadn’t shaken it off, hadn’t trusted him with the information.

Though who could? Who would? Sara was as human as the rest of them and dying was lonely work.

He swallowed, now feeling a little sick himself. But Reyes had seen enough of the galaxy to know there were fates worse than a death of one’s own choosing. And he knew that Sara had enough people who loved her who were probably scared for her and were perfectly happy to vocalize it to her at length. He could be stronger than that. She didn’t need more people berating her out of affection and fear. “Like I said. Resourceful.”

Her arms snaked their way around his torso. One settled across the middle of his back. The other snagged as best it could at the canvas fabric that sat flush against his lower back. When she spoke, he almost couldn’t hear her. If they weren’t so close, perhaps he wouldn’t have. “I died.”

Yes, that she had and she’d probably been brave and snarky about it, too. He didn’t doubt that in the slightest. And no, Reyes was not okay with it, but he could pretend to be. He could acknowledge that it was probably the best option she had in a tough situation and therefore nothing he could fault her for. “You might still be in the Archon’s clutches if you didn’t.” His throat clicked, dry, as he tried to work some saliva around the back of his mouth. “Were you afraid?”

 _I should have been there_.

The warmth of her exhaled breath brushed over his neck. Her voice was steadier than his had been. That didn’t surprise Reyes in the slightest. “It’s what I signed on for.”

“You didn’t sign on for this. Your father did. And Miss Harper,” he answered in lieu of offering a much more asinine observation. _You have every right to be scared, Sara_ and _I’m afraid for you so much of the time, too_. Sometimes, when he’d had to do something particularly heinous for Kadara’s sake, he feared for himself, too, and what she’d think of him. She hadn’t signed on for this, that was true, and she hadn’t signed on for the kind of complications a man like Reyes brought into a person’s life.

Reyes wrapped his hands around Sara’s biceps and pushed her away, just far enough that he could see the look on her face, gauge her reaction to him. There were so many things he wanted to say to her. And there was only one that mattered. But she needed to be able to hear him. “You don’t have to be the Pathfinder here.” He shook his head, sharp, vehement, to make his point. “Not with me.” _I would prefer it, in fact_ , he thought. _Then I wouldn’t have to be the Charlatan either, would I? How nice that would be._ “Not ever if that’s what you’d prefer.”

Skepticism radiated from the downturn of her mouth, the furrow of her brow, the flash in her eye that called bullshit on him far more eloquently than the word could ever do on its own. “I don’t think I know how anymore,” she admitted.

She was so young, even the rest of her crew was young, most of them. Reyes, too, was too young to be the man he was. Of that, he was reasonably certain. And yet here they all were, shouldering responsibilities none of them should have had.

He lifted his hands to cup her cheeks and tipped her face up as he bent toward her. “That’s okay, too,” he said, lips brushing against hers before he captured them in a quick kiss. “We all get tunnel vision from time to time.” This, he spoke against her cheek, his nose nuzzling against the high arch of the bone.

“I think it’s more than that.” Sara huffed in dark amusement, relaxing by inches. “But I’ll be okay, I think.”

“I don’t doubt that for a moment.”

“I don’t know how you knew anything was wrong to begin with.”

Shouldering toward her and grabbing her by the wrist, he tugged her toward their usual spots on the bench. “You’re not so mysterious, my darling Sara.” He tilted his head thoughtfully. “Admittedly, I could not have guessed quite how wrong that something was, but, ah, I suppose I’m not psychic.” His hand wrapped around the back of his neck as he took a seat. “How long can you stay?”

What he meant was _how long do you want to stay?_

What he meant was _what can I do to help?_

“Sometimes I think I’d like to stay forever,” she said, half-joking, a nonsense notion if he’d ever heard one. Even Reyes didn’t expect to stay on Kadara _forever_. “But I have a day. Vetra found a few intriguing reasons to come immediately, but that was the best she could do as far as delays once we got here.”

He decided, there and then, that he would see Sara smile truly again before the end of her time here. That was, he thought, a noble goal. “We could do a lot with a day, you and I.”

When she looked at him this time, he found he’d already partially succeeded in his goal because she smiled and it was almost real this time, almost as good as the one she wore when she was genuinely happy.

It was a step in the right direction.

And that was all Reyes needed to know he could.


End file.
